This doesn't just mean NFT scammers. You can literally be a ZK cryptographer with a pure mathmatics degree working on a privacy program, recieving some ownership of what you produce, and boom, you can't buy a house.
More detail on Operation Chokepoint by the WSJ (as another poster points out, the NYT is omitting a lot of detail here):
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/debanking-and-the-return-of-oper...
In theory, competition between private entities allows people to “pick and choose” the set of policies they agree with, shopping around for their system of law. And in theory, competition will rise up and allow policy options for every case. In practice a lot of private businesses arrive at similar conclusions on policies that optimize their profitability and that optimization becomes what dictates policy, and then most competition duplicates or arrives at the same or similar consensus on policy. So, instead of being ruled by democratic policies, we get ruled by business profitability policies. Sometimes these are harmless, often times they’re not, so people suck it up and just accept them just like they do law in the land, even though one at least tries to be democratic.
So I definitely empathize with these crypto groups getting “debanked” on that front, even though I don’t agree with many of their business models in general.
The US (feds or states) do not do this, by not providing bank accounts for everybody.
A number of European countries, though certainly not all of them, do that: they have a state-owned enterprise provide "bank accounts of last resort", like the post office. If you want one, even if you're on death row, you can open one. These bank accounts suck, just to be clear, but they do provide a means to get paid and transfer money for, for example, paying your taxes.
Personally I think the postal service housing critical services is an elegant solution. It needn’t be the only option, but postal services by their nature have offices throughout their respective lands, and that can make sometimes-high-touch functions easier to facilitate. You already have the brick and mortar space, public servants who have presumably passed some measure of vetting, and infrastructure, all right there.
I feel a similar sense of frustration when I cannot access half of the Internet due to CloudFlare's endless captcha loops.
Two examples in Australia: Qantas (airline) and the “Triple J” FM radio station.
Qantas has nice things on your 13-15 hour flight to LA or SF. Wine, meals, movies, water, coffee.. all free. United and Virgin compete on this route so have to match Qantas. Theres more to this for sure - but Qantas’ existence as AU national carrier keeps the rest from enshittifying too much..
Triple J radio is government funded. They pay for actual human beings in an actual studio. They support up and coming artists. If your FM station wants to compete with Triple J you gotta also hire humans. End result: in Australia FM radio can be quite pleasant. By contrast, FM radio in many US cities is garbage robot-radio stations with more ads than music.
If you're interested in a few less well known Aussie musos.. these are all top choices to check out: Pendulum, Butterfingers, Art vs Science, Client Liaison, Flight Facilities, Missy Higgins, and Tame Impala!
Art Vs Science fucking rules.
If a regulated banking industry isn't required to provide some set of basics to all legal citizens&residents and legal businesses, then maybe the govenment has to arrange banking of last resort?
Or, if the regulated industry is the only option, where there's higher risks or costs associated with some businesses, is there a fair way to price that in, or mitigate?
For example, let's say an industry category tends to have a problem with excessive CC chargebacks that are due to dishonest customers scamming. Maybe charge the business something like the actual costs to provide all those chargebacks, but don't cut them off. And/or be less permissive towards serial-chargeback cardholders.
But in any case, let a legal business in the country accept the primary means of payment in the country. And have protections of society, like not being known as needing to keep a life-threatening amount of cash on-site at a small business.
(BTW, I personally disapprove of a lot of the kinds of businesses that I've heard complain about debanking, but as long as they're legal businesses, I think they're entitled to various basics of safe and orderly society. A little bit like, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," though I wouldn't go quite that far on this one.)
Banking is one of the areas where the nominally democratic government has not only failed at addressing this broken dynamic, but has eagerly embraced it to implement authoritarian mandates that couldn't possibly pass the substantive bar set by the legal system. For example you'd have a hard time passing a law that anybody with a scary sounding name is prohibited from doing something, but at a bank that kind of arbitrary capriciousness is routine and encouraged.
[0] you might reflexively think that framing rights positively is unworkable because it creates contradictions between the same right of different parties. But what it actually does is leave the contradictions remaining front and center so they can be equitably weighed by courts. The negative framing of rights does not resolve these contradictions, but rather scuttles them in the background to be ignored until the hypocrisy grows so apparent that it boils over.
like_any_other•8mo ago